Momail launches free mobile mass-market email

The mobile email space is hotting up. I’ve lost count of the clients available for download. The general public, the mass market, the normobs (“normal mobile users”), they’re all of a sudden very hot property as handsets advance to the point where email is actually usable.

So excited are the chaps at Momail, they’re invoking the ghost of Hotmail. Says Julie Meyer, founder at Ariadne Capital (who helped them come into the UK):

“We believe Momail is the biggest step change in email since Hotmail which was acquired by Microsoft 10 years ago. Hotmail de-coupled email from a specific desktop or laptop and made it free; Momail continues that progress for the consumer – fitting their email to whatever phone they have.”

They believe it and when you look at Momail, you can see why. They’ve given some serious thought to the deployment and architecture — to the point that they haven’t even bothered with applications on handsets. Nope.

Momail uses the handset’s existing mobile client. Nearly every handset launched in the UK since, what, 2000, has contained some sort of email client. You might have purchased a really cute Samsung with an annoyingly clunky interface, but chances are, if you’re that keen, you can configure email on it. Ergo, there’s actually quite a large installed base of mobile handsets that CAN run mobile email. Configuring them is a problem. A problem that Momail reckon they’ve solved.

I’m reasonably confident they’ve given the problem a decent shot. I don’t know how a 5 year old Samsung would fare, but if the experience on my Nokia E61i is anything to go by, it’s a delightful piece of simplicity to setup.

Here’s me on the last stage of setup:

The site claims a two minute setup time. Agreed. It took me about a minute or so. No arsing around, no client downloads. No APN configurations. I simply filled in the online form, confirmed my mobile with a PIN code sent by text, then activated the Momail settings sent by text.

The Momail team have given substantial thought to the registration process. Kudos. Muchos kudos. It was a breeze.

The settings sent out to my phone configured the Nokia’s own messaging client with a MOMAIL account that worked immediately.

I was assigned a default and easily memorable address of your_phone_number@momail.co.uk. The concept being that you then log on to the Momail email service via the web and configure your Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and so on. Momail supports dynamic origination headers — so if you reply to a mail received via Gmail, it’ll be sent out from that address. Useful.

There’s nothing to review in the context of the email client. That’s all down to the handset you’re using at the moment. I have a ton of S60 III handsets around so they’ll all work the same. I should have tried the process on my iPhone to see how it works (yes, Momail is iPhone compatible).

Ultimately, I’m pretty sure that Momail is 100% compatible with anything as long as it conforms to certain email norms. So even if you’re sporting an Apple Newton and have someone managed to get it to connect to the internet (and, er, given it an email client), Momail should work.

Here’s a wee look at the Momail web client:

I suspect Momail are aiming for the level below prosumer here in the UK. The kind of people who have a decent handset and a desire to get their email on-the-go… but absolutely NO CLUE and NO INTEREST in learning how to configure their device to use mobile email. But they do want email on their mobile. So give them a really easy way of doing it and, well, something like Momail has a lot of potential.

The challenge, I reckon, will be getting the concept of Momail into the target consumer mindsets. Every success to Momail.

By the way, if you do have 120 seconds, try it out. Go to www.momail.co.uk and check out the download process. And if you’ve got an old Sony Ericsson or Samsung, see how it fares?

Momail functionality:

Outstanding Device Support – Unlike other mobile email services in the market today, Momail does not require a special client or software to be downloaded into the mobile device as it leverages the standard email program already in the phone. This simplicity allows Momail to be the market leader in device support. In addition, all new handsets will be able to Momail support at launch.

AutoConfig – Momail’s simplicity enables it to be automatically configured for both data traffic and email use with a minimum of user input upon registering for the service.

SuperInbox – This functionality provides users with simple control and easy handling of all email accounts. With Momail SuperInbox, all email accounts can be collected and reviewed from one inbox. All emails forwarded to the inbox will be checked an extra time for spam and viruses.

AutoCollect – A feature that helps the end-user to automatically collect the different email accounts into the Momail SuperInbox.

Dynamic Sender – Momail dynamically differentiates between email addresses aggregated into your Momail inbox. Thus, when you reply to emails received in the aggregated Momail inbox, the answer will be from the email account to which the original email was sent. For example, if you answer an email sent to your Gmail account via Momail, your reply will automatically show your Gmail address as sender.

Push Mail – Enabling Push activates alerts for incoming mobile email like SMS. This feature demands support for push on the mobile, and the configuration is automatically handled by Momail.

True Momail – As with SMS and MMS Momail permits users to send emails to each other using only the receivers’ mobile phone number.

Momail City – Momail’s web interface includes numerous smart features to simplify mobile email usage and configure personal settings. Momail City is also a complete webmail solution and provides the user access to his or her email from any connected computer in the world.